“I want to build you a house,” Myron said.
Hazel’s eyes blinked open.
“You heard me, gi—”
Hazel grabbed Myron’s hand, still holding the honeysuckle branch. Bit him. Not too hard. But she made sure teeth sank into flesh.
He pulled back his hand.
“Woman!” Myron exclaimed, but Hazel knew he lived for her love bites. She noticed that even after they were married, they didn’t behave like the married folk Hazel knew. Often, Myron would chase her around the house he built for her, Hazel’s laughter filling the home, until he had successfully tackled her on their four-poster bed. Sometimes, Hazel would stay up waiting for Myron after a late shift, and they’d sit at the kitchen booth over cigarettes and drink coffee and talk of things to come.
“Are you serious, Myron?”
“As serious as you beating on me.”
Hazel rolled her eyes.
“Nah, I’m serious,” he said. “Why not?”
Hazel was quiet. A hummingbird flitted about the blooming magnolias. “How do you know?” she said.
“Know what?”
“That I’m the woman for you. That you the man for me.”
“Sit up,” Myron said, his tone suddenly serious. He nudged her with his knees.
“No, I’m comfortable.”
“Hazel Rose, you look at me now,” Myron said. He raised Hazel’s head with the tip of his index finger. “You remember the first thing I ever said to you?”
“？‘You all kinds of crazy’？”
Myron gave a small laugh. “It was ‘I got you.’ I meant that. You hear me? I meant that.”
For a few minutes, the only sounds were the hummingbirds and the gentle breeze blowing through the magnolia leaves. Then Hazel said, “I never told you what else I did that day.”
Myron tilted his head and took a long look at her. “I’m afraid to even ask,” he said.
“I went back to the deli.”
“You did what?” Myron’s tone turned sharp.
“I went back. Later that night. I waited ’til midnight. Snuck out. There was a single light on, so I knew Stanley was in there. I knocked quiet as a bird, but he heard. Came out the back holding a frozen lamb’s leg to the side of his face. He opened the door and let me in.”
“What happened then?”
“I gave him one of my lemon meringue pies,” Hazel said. But she had also done something else that day back in 1937, done something that would have gotten her killed in the South: She gave Stanley a kiss. Planted the tenderest of kisses on the left side of his face, bruised and purple as a melon.
Under the honeysuckle above Miss Dawn’s porch swing, Myron and Hazel had made a decision. They would start saving for their future house.
A month later they graduated, and Myron became a Pullman porter, where he’d been for the past three years now. His huge frame suited him for the daily haul of white folks’ luggage at downtown’s Union Station. He worked the overnight shifts because they paid more. Teased Hazel that he didn’t mind being called “boy”; he knew he was her man.
Which was why confusion, heavy as down, blanketed Hazel as she looked up from her quilting to see Myron, breathless, standing before her. He had burst through the shop door, not bothering to knock or ring the buzzer—something he had never done before. He also was never late to work. And yet, there he was—tall and dark and splendid in his uniform.
“My—” Hazel began, but Myron held up a finger, cutting her off.